By Gene Clancy
The people of Europe are angry, very angry —
and they’re doing something about it.
On Nov. 14, a European day of “action and
solidarity” will take place, called by the European Trade Union Confederation. Unions from
15 countries have already announced strikes,
demonstrations and other types of protest, including an unprecedented joint general strike in
Spain and Portugal that plans to shut down the
entire Iberian Peninsula.
According to the organizers, the protests are
directed not only against the governments of each
country, but also against institutions of the European Union, which is forcing crushing economic
policies on its member nations.
A prelude to what’s coming was shown in
Greece on Nov. 6-7. A two-day general strike to
protest new austerity measures proposed by the
Greek Parliament shut down most of the country,
and despite pouring rain and police use of tear
gas and water cannons, the strike was accompanied by massive demonstrations, especially by the
PAME union confederation, in Athens’ central
Syntagma Square.
Nevertheless, the Greek Parliament narrowly
passed the newest round of austerity measures,
but there are signs that this may be the last such
approval. As the debate went on, parliamentary
employees themselves found out that they had
not been spared from the “reforms,” and they
were about to be subject to the wage and allowance cuts introduced for other public sector employees.
An impromptu rebellion followed as one such
employee interrupted lawmakers debating the
measures and announced that the workers were
going on strike. Workers tasked with recording
the proceedings stopped taking notes while other
Parliament staff filled the house’s hallways shouting protests against the planned changes. One of

them called on the lawmakers to get out of the
building while others tried to get the attention of
pro-capitalist lawmakers as they walked into the
building, demanding that they block the amendment.
Following this rebellious display, several members of the ruling coalition expressed doubts that
their slim parliamentary majority would survive
the elections called for April of next year.
Greek communists call for ‘disobedience’
Aleka Papariga, the general secretary of the
Greek Communist Party, has urged members to
take up civil disobedience against the country’s
government, in an attempt to block its ongoing
austerity programs. From the podium in the Parliament, she denounced the state’s repression.
Greek workers will participate in the European-wide protests on Nov 14.
Trade union confederations in Italy are also
planning actions. The Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) has called a general strike
for four hours in the private sector, which will be
accompanied by a 24-hour strike in the public
Continued on page 11

‘LIKE MEETING FAMILY’
Alan Blueford’s parents
visit Mumia

3

‘FISCAL CLIFF’
Capitalism falling down

Editorial 10

THE ELECTIONS

Revolutionary reflections 8

SOLIDARITY WITH SANDY SURVIVORS
• Aid from the people

7

• Workers demand rights

5, 7

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Activists from Houston
who came on the Abolition
Movement bus stand at the
Capitol after the march —
the group includes students
from Univ. of Houston, the
ACLU, the New Black Panther
Party, the S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, Amnesty
International, Workers World
Party, KPFT Pacifica Radio’s
The Prison Show staff, and
the family of death row
prisoner Howard Guidry.

They chanted, “Executions? Shut ‘em down! Racist
courts? Shut ‘em down! Lying cops? Shut ‘em down!
Sleeping lawyers? Shut ‘em down! The death penalty?
Shut it down! The whole damn system? Shut it down!”
Close to 500 death-row families, exonerees, friends
and activists rallied at the Capitol and marched through
downtown Austin Nov. 3 for the 13th Annual March to
Abolish the Death Penalty.
Mark Clements kicked off the march by instructing the
crowd that when he said, “Death row,” they were to respond, “Hell no!” Clements was arrested at the age of 16,
brutalized by Chicago police, and spent 28 years in prison
before finally being released for a crime he didn’t commit.
Chants echoed off the Capitol and downtown buildings, while signs and banners were held high. Shujaa
Graham, Albert Burrell and Ron Keine, three death-row
exonerees with Witness to Innocence, led the march,
along with Clements and former Black Panther Lawrence
Hayes, who spent almost 20 years on New York’s death
row.
“We let [Texas] Gov. Rick Perry and every Texas legislator know that the movement to end capital punishment is building, and support [for the death penalty] is
dwindling,” said Joanne Gavin, who traveled on the Texas
Death Penalty Abolition Movement’s bus from Houston.
Sarilda Routier, mother-in-law of Darlie Routier, was
surrounded by Darlie Routier’s family as she explained
how her daughter-in-law is innocent but remains on
death row. Her moving words brought a stunned silence
to the hundreds present and tears to many eyes in the
crowd.
Barbara Lewis, mother of former Delaware death-row
prisoner Robert Gattis, spoke about hope and continuing
the struggle “even if you are not rich, you are not educated, and you are not white. Never stop fighting!” Gattis’
1992 death sentence was commuted this year from death

to life in prison without parole.
Other speakers included Nick Been, of Kids against the
Death Penalty, who is also Jeff Wood’s nephew. Wood
was sent to death row under the law of parties, despite
the fact that he had killed no one. He wasn’t even in the
store when the shooting incident he was convicted of
took place. Wood’s sister, Terri Been, spoke, as did the
sister of Louis Castro Perez, Delia Perez-Meyer, of the
Texas Moratorium Network.
Marilyn Shankle-Grant spoke for her young son,
Paul Storey, and Roderick Reed spoke for his innocent
brother, Rodney Reed, an African-American man who
was framed for the rape and murder of a white woman,
despite evidence pointing to her fiancé, a white policeman who is now in prison for sexually assaulting another
woman. Reed’s mother, Sandra Reed, and friend Caitlin
Adams were also present. A banner for another innocent
man, Rob Wills, was held by his supporters.
When death-row families and exonerees were asked
to come to the stage, more than 25 people — mothers,
grandfathers, spouses, aunts, uncles, daughters, nieces
and nephews, brothers and sisters — came forward, as
well as several death-row exonerees.
“The determination of these people is what inspires
and motivates us to continue fighting executions in this
racist state of Texas, which has carried out 489 legal
lynchings since 1982, well over one-third of the 1,300 executions in this country,” said Pat Hartwell, of the Abolition Movement in Houston.
The rally was chaired by Lily Hughes, the national
chair of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and was
organized by her organization, along with the Texas Moratorium Network in Austin, the Abolition Movement in
Houston, and Kids Against the Death Penalty, which is
based in San Antonio.
The spirit of the day was framed by Clements, who
said, “This government is corrupt! Why in the world is
Rick Perry still in office and Rodney Reed still in prison?
Gov. Perry needs to be served a pink slip now!”

Houston

Governor’s 250th execution protested
With the stick swinging the piñata at full force, the
grandson of Shaka Sankofa literally knocked the head
off Texas Gov. Rick Perry as the 250th execution under
Perry’s watch was being carried out in Huntsville, Texas,
on Oct. 31. Donnie Roberts Jr. was executed as activists
in Houston gathered at a 400-year-old tree, officially
known as the “Old Oak Hanging Tree,” where people were
lynched during the 1800s. A four-foot likeness of Perry

was beaten until it was just shreds of paper and wire and
all 250 pieces of black-wrapped candy — each with one
of Perry’s victim’s names written on it — had fallen to
the sidewalk.
Then Sankofa’s three grandchildren, Shardiasha Haywood, Shaka Sankofa Haywood and Jontaisha Hawkins,
began the reading of Perry’s 250 victims. Sankofa was
Continued on page 3

Oakland marches
against police killings
By Judy Greenspan
Oakland, Calif.
“We just commemorated the six-month
anniversary of my son’s death. I am here
today to speak for Alan Blueford. We are
all Alan Blueford!” The powerful voice of
Jeralynn Blueford, Alan’s mother, rang
out across Oscar Grant Plaza — the site of
countless demonstrations against police
brutality, war, racism and injustice — as
she greeted the crowd of 500 activists who
came out Nov. 10 to protest her son’s murder by the Oakland Police Department.
Blueford’s mother urged the crowd to redouble their efforts to win justice for her
son and for all victims of police violence.
On May 6, an OPD police officer drove
up to a group of three young African-American men without his lights on. Blueford
was alarmed and tried to run away. After
chasing him for five blocks, the police shot
Blueford dead in the driveway of a family
celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
Since Blueford’s murder, the OPD has
done everything to obstruct the truth, including fabricating a gun battle between
Blueford and the police. It turns out that
the only bullets fired were by the police
officer himself, including the one he shot
into his own foot. The family has been
continually lied to by police and city officials, and the story has been misrepresented in the major media.
Other family members attended the
Nov. 10 rally, including Adam Blueford,
who just returned from an East Coast
speaking trip about his son’s case. The
Bluefords spoke in New York City and
Philadelphia, drawing large crowds at the
height of Superstorm Sandy. They also
traveled with Jack Bryson, a hard-working activist fighting police murder and
violence, to visit revolutionary journalist
Mumia Abu-Jamal in prison in Pennsyl-

vania. Bryson’s son was with Oscar Grant
on a Bay Area Rapid Transit platform
when transit police killed Grant in 2009.
Bryson read a moving statement from
Abu-Jamal expressing solidarity with the
struggle for justice for Adam Blueford.
“Mumia told us to organize, organize, and
keep organizing,” stated Bryson.
Relatives of other victims of police
murder addressed the crowd, including
Dolores Gaines, the mother of Derrick
Gaines, who was shot down and killed
by police in San Francisco while running
away from them. “Our teenagers don’t
deserve to be murdered in cold blood. It’s
not a crime to run, but it’s a crime to commit murder,” she said.
Several union members and activists
called upon labor to support the struggle
for justice for Alan Blueford and all young
people who have been murdered by the
police. Gladys Gray of Service Employees
Local 1021 told all union members to “put
on your union T-shirts. We are calling for
all members to support this family.”
Jack Heyman, a retired International
Longshore Workers Union Local 10 member, reminded the crowd about the port
shutdown three years ago to protest the
BART police killing of Oscar Grant and
the “general strike” last year led by Occupy Oakland, which also shut down the
Port of Oakland. Heyman said, “We have
to do this again!”
Following the rally, demonstrators took
to the streets and held a spirited march
through downtown Oakland, ending back
at Oscar Grant Plaza.
The Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition
is holding a special program to continue
organizing against police brutality “from
Oakland and the Bay Area to Anaheim
and New York City” on Dec. 18, 7 p.m., at
Laney College in Oakland. For more information, visit justice4alanblueford.org.

Continued from page 2
executed on June 22, 2000. More than 20
activists took the microphone and as each
name was read, the utter horror of what
Perry has done was made public.
“In 12 years as Texas governor, [Perry] has set a record that will never be
matched by any other U.S. governor —
250 executions. The death penalty will be
history before anyone [else] could ever
hit this unthinkable milestone,” said Abolition Movement organizer Pat Hartwell.
Nation of Islam Mosque 45 Minister Robert Muhammad had witnessed Sankofa’s
execution; he told the crowd that we must

Shardaisha Haywood, grandchild of Shaka
Sankofa hits the piñata.

never let his execution be in vain, that the
fight for abolition must intensify.
Report and photos Gloria Rubac

Jeralynn Blueford speaking, with Adam Blueford behind her on the right.

WW photo: Judy Greenspan

Mumia meets with parents
of Alan Blueford
By Terri Kay
Mumia Abu-Jamal met with Jeralynn
Blueford and Adam Blueford, the parents
of Alan Blueford, when they traveled to
Pennsylvania on Oct. 29 to build support
for justice for their son, Alan. The African-American youth was killed by Miguel
Masso of the Oakland Police Department
in California on May 6.
The Bluefords traveled with Jack
Bryson, who got involved in the struggle against police repression when Oscar
Grant, another African-American youth,
was killed on a Bay Area Rapid Transit platform there by the BART police in
2009. Bryson’s two sons were on the platform with Grant when he was killed.
The visit was organized by Sandra
Jones, a death-penalty abolitionist and
assistant professor of sociology at Rowan
University in Glassboro, N.J.
Workers World spoke with the Bluefords, Bryson and Jones about the visit
with Abu-Jamal, long-time political prisoner, award-winning journalist and former death-row inmate in Pennsylvania.
Workers World: Why did you
want to meet with Mumia?
Jack Bryson: I read all his books and
look at him as the Messiah of the movement. In thinking about everything he has
been through, who better to comfort and
advise the Bluefords?
Jeralynn Blueford: I read up on his
case. He experienced what I’ve been going
through to the tenth power.
Adam Blueford: I knew he’s been
struggling for justice for many years.
Through our struggle, I thought I could
learn something from him.
WW: What impressed you most
about Mumia?
A. Blueford: [Mumia’s] heart. He was
such a pleasant individual, and me being a
religious person, him saying “God is love”
is something I brought home with me. His
knowledge and his willingness to help.
J. Blueford: His calming and soothing presence, coupled with his intelligence and strength.
Bryson: He talked about how he loved
Huey Newton, the Black Panther Party
and Oakland.
Sandra Jones: The ease at which he
was able to go back and forth between
commentary about politics, discussion of
Obama to personal confirmation about
himself and attention to Jack and the
Blue­fords. At this point he has been in
general population for less than a year.
He had been in solitary for so long.
WW: What advice did Mumia
­offer about winning justice for Alan
Blueford?

Bryson: Don’t depend on the government. Depend on the community and the
people. Organize, organize, organize. “Organize with this” [he said, pointing to his
forehead].
J. Blueford: Keep fighting. Keep mobilizing. Educating the youth in the struggle is really important.
Jones: [Mumia suggested] creating
a website “killer-cops.com.” He thought
it would be controversial to have that
name, but it would draw attention. He
mentioned that all the victims could be
listed and have a central place to build the
movement.
A. Blueford: Mumia said that justice
is never given, it’s fought for. Not violently, but through education and movements, like the JAB [Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition], which we’re attempting
to build.
WW: What did Mumia share
about his own case and situation?
Jones: He spoke about being able to
have contact with other prisoners. [He]
told about one young prisoner who told
him he didn’t “do books.” He now “does
books,” and Mumia is educating other
young prisoners. He’s able to spend time
with Eddie Africa of the Move 9 [To learn
about the Move 9, see workers.org]. Eddie
has been alone most of the time he’s been
in prison.
Bryson: When asked, “How do you do
this — you’re innocent and [have been]
kidnapped?” He said every day he is alive
is a victory.
WW: Is there anything JAB can
do for Mumia?
A. Blueford: We want to make sure
the injustice done to Mumia is not ever
swept under the rug, that this movement
we’re building will eventually get justice
for Mumia and walk him out of the doors
of that penitentiary.
Bryson: We should write to him and
continue to spread international support
for him.
WW: Anything else you’d like to
share?
Bryson: When [Mumia] was 14, he
was arrested in Oakland for supporting
Huey [Newton]. He talked about Oscar
Grant, Kevin Cooper in San Quentin, Troy
Davis and Tookie Williams.
A. Blueford: Mumia really showed us
a lot of love. It was like meeting a family
member. … We talked, laughed, hugged,
cried — like family.
Mumia Abu-Jamal talked about the
campaign for justice for Alan Blueford
on his Nov. 4 Prison Radio broadcast.
Listen to “Tears of Sorrow and Rage” at
tinyurl.com/cgha3jx.

Page 4

Nov. 22, 2012

workers.org

As capitalism stagnates

Bosses meet global slowdown
with mass layoffs
By Fred Goldstein
Big business economists breathed a
public sigh of relief at the announcement
that the U.S. economy grew by an annual
rate of 2.0 percent in the quarter ending
Sept. 30. They were thanking their lucky
stars that it was an increase over the 1.3
percent growth in the second quarter.
But workers should be alert to the
less-publicized reservations behind this
public show of optimism.
First, the 2.0 percent growth was completely inflated by Pentagon spending.
“What saved this figure from being much,
much worse, was a somewhat freakish
surge in government spending, driven
by a 13 percent gain in national defense
spending,” revealed Rob Carnell, the
chief international economist at ING
Bank. (Financial Times, Oct. 26)
Thus the Obama administration and
Leon Panetta at the Pentagon made sure
a surge in military spending came in time
to rescue the economic growth figures in
the pre-election period. Without this military spending, the official growth number would have been 1.4 percent, essentially the same as in the second quarter.
That would have been a statistical alarm
bell warning that the economy was on the
way to tanking.
Other danger signs for workers
In the wake of the global capitalist
slowdown, U.S. exports last quarter declined for the first time in three and a half
years. Capital investment by the bosses
went from a 3.6 percent increase in the
second quarter to a 1.3 percent decrease
last quarter. When the bosses cut back
investment, workers are bound to lose
their jobs.
Also, any rise in spending among the
workers and the middle class is being
fueled by the beginning of a new credit bubble. An article in the Oct. 27 New
York Times entitled “Rise in Household
Debt Might Be a Sign of a Strengthening
Recovery” cheerily announced that U.S.
households “are taking on more debt
than they are shedding.” Debt from mortgages, credit cards and auto loans had
been falling for 14 consecutive quarters
as the masses tried to get out from under
the mountain of debt accumulated during
the bubble. The bubble burst, leading to
the great financial crisis.
Now the bankers are celebrating that
people are going back into debt, bringing more income from interest and fees
to the bankers and keeping the economy from collapsing. In other words, the
bankers are looking forward to profiting
from the next credit bubble. The bosses,
economists and politicians are hoping it
will keep capitalism going.
The real news: mass layoffs planned
What really should have made the
headlines were the decline in worldwide
sales by the giant monopolies, the announcements of mass layoffs and the expectation of future layoffs.
As the crisis of overproduction begins
to choke the capitalist markets in China,
India, Brazil, Russia and especially Europe, the sales and profits of the giant
transnational monopolies have begun to
contract. As one bourgeois analyst put
it, lower sales “are a sure prescription
for layoffs to start heating up as companies take immediate action to show their
shareholders how responsive they are.”

(Business Insider, Oct. 25)
Another said that “North American
companies since Sept. 1 have announced
plans to eliminate more than 62,600 positions at home and abroad, the biggest
two-month drop since the start of 2010,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg
News. Firings total 158,100 so far this
year, more than the 129,000 job cuts in
the same period in 2011.” (Bloomberg
News, Oct. 25)
There is fear that “the economic recovery is not picking up” as sales come in below estimates.
Hewlett-Packard announced in September that it plans 29,000 job cuts as
PC sales slow around the world. Banks
in the U.S. are planning 19,000 job cuts,
while the giant Swiss bank UBS is planning 10,000 layoffs.
Ford is closing two European factories, one in Belgium and one in Britain,
and will cut 6,200 jobs or 13 percent of its
European workforce. Dow Chemical will
close about 20 plants, eliminating 2,400
jobs. DuPont plans 1,500 layoffs right
away and more in the future if profits
continue to decline.
AMD, the second-largest chip maker
for personal computers, will lay off 15
percent of its workforce; Colgate-Palmolive, the engine maker Cummins and
Kimberly-Clark are among the giants that
have announced layoffs due to a decline
in profits and/or sales.
The giant corporations are a bellwether
for the global economy and for what the
workers will confront in the coming period as capitalism is unable to lift itself out
of the crisis begun in 2007.

my reeled off four straight quarters of better than 4% growth.” The article failed to
point out that even with 4 percent growth,
that was the first “jobless recovery” in
post-World War II history — meaning
that despite economic growth, workers
were not rehired.
The hard fact regarding the development of technology under capitalism is
that the more productive labor becomes,
the greater must be the rate of growth of
the capitalist economy in order to create
jobs for all those made redundant. But the
rate of economic growth is not increasing.
It is declining as technology grows.
Officially, the economy has generated
146,000 new jobs a month on average
— which is just about enough to match
population growth. Thus, the 23 million
officially unemployed, underemployed or
forced part-time workers cannot look forward to a capitalist recovery lifting them
out of their misery.
On the contrary, the winds of economic
crisis and downturn are blowing stronger
and stronger, from Asia to Europe to Latin
America. The workers in Greece, Portugal,
Spain and Italy are already in a state of resistance to the crisis. Strikes and demonstrations are growing more frequent, more
numerous and more widespread throughout the European continent.
The ruling class here is fearful that
these winds will stream into the U.S. and
provoke a European-style wave of working-class resistance and/or explosions in
the oppressed communities. The next administration will be imposing more painful cutbacks.

Big picture:
capitalism can’t stop global slowdown

The debate between Obama and Romney about who can turn the economy
around was utterly false. The crisis of unemployment is generated by the capitalist
system, which has reached a stage that cannot be reversed in any fundamental way.
The growth of job-destroying technology and the creation of a globalized
economy in which workers everywhere
are in a wage competition and a race to
the bottom are developments beyond the
control of politicians, or the capitalists
themselves, for that matter. This process is driven by the struggle to get the
most profit. This has always been the law
driving capitalist development. It means
making fewer and fewer workers turn
out more and more goods in less and less
time at lower and lower wages.

Some signs of the bigger picture seep
through the media. The Financial Times
points out that, despite the rise in profit
margins on the index of the S&P 500 corporations over the last several years, “sales
growth on the index has been down for a
year and a half.” In other words, the markets have been unable to absorb the output
of the corporations. Nevertheless, these
firms have been able to squeeze out rising
profits, mostly by speeding up workers or
cutting them out altogether. That’s how
they boost profits despite declining sales.
The Wall Street Journal of Oct. 26
notes how dismal the 2 percent growth
rate is for the economy: “After the much
milder recession of 1990-1991 the econo-

Real issue: capitalism is at a dead end

The dangers of this process are beginning to seep into the consciousness of
sections of the capitalist economic establishment.
David Leonhardt, one of the chief economic writers for the New York Times,
wrote a major piece on Oct. 24 based on
polling a number of economists about the
real issues behind the economic crisis.
Leonhardt noted that real family income is now 8 percent below what it was
11 years ago, while in the decades following World War II it had increased by 30
percent.
“The biggest causes, according to interviews with economists over the last several
months, are not the issues that dominate
the political debate,” wrote Leonhardt.
“At the top of the list are the digital revolution, which has allowed machines to
replace many forms of human labor, and
the modern wave of globalization, which
has allowed millions of low-wage workers around the world to begin competing
with Americans.”
The core of this analysis was begun not
by bourgeois economists but by a Marxist, Sam Marcy, in his groundbreaking
work, “High Tech, Low Pay,” written in
1985. Marcy, who was the founder of
Workers World Party, said of the scientific-technological revolution that “its
whole tendency is to diminish the labor
force while attempting to increase production. The technological revolution is
therefore a quantum jump whose devastating effects require a revolutionary
strategy to overcome.”
This was written in the wake of the capitalist restructuring of industry going on
during the Reagan administration. Since
that time, the scientific-technological attack on the workers has deepened and
widened onto a global arena. This writer followed the process in 2008 with the
book “Low-Wage Capitalism,” which analyzed the globalization process and its effect on the worldwide working class along
the lines begun by Marcy.
While the consciousness of the bourgeoisie can only extend to the symptoms
of their crisis, the working class can and
must understand the cause of the crisis:
the capitalist system. And it must learn
that the only way to combat the crisis is
through mass mobilization and struggle.
The only way to end the crisis once and
for all is with the destruction of capitalism and the creation of a socialist system
based on human need, not profit.

Low-Wage Capitalism

High Tech, Low Pay

A Marxist Analysis of the Changing
Character of the Working Class

Capitalism at a Dead End
Job destruction, overproduction and crisis
in the High-tech era

What the new globalized high-tech imperialism means for the class struggle in the U.S.

LowWageCapitalism.com

Books are available at Amazon and other bookstores.

workers.org

Nov. 22, 2012

Page 5

Why we need to demand
a shorter work week
By Martha Grevatt
In February, the Detroit Free Press
reported that the United Auto Workers
union was preparing “arguments over the
thirty-hour week, perhaps the most widely discussed union demand of the current
labor era.”
If Detroiters reading this are wondering how they missed the news, there is a
reason. The quote is from the Free Press
of Feb. 21, 1937.
With the crisis of mass unemployment
during the Great Depression, unions and
unemployed organizations were pressing
for a shorter workweek. One of the demands of the 44-day sit-down strike of
General Motors plants was for a 30-hour
week with no cut in pay. Its logic was irrefutable: If four workers can do the work
of three workers, 40 million can do the
work of 30 million. That creates 10 million jobs. A headline on a 1930s leaflet
said it all: Six-hour day, eight hours pay
— Keep depression away.
Even before the sit-downs, the 30-hour
week was a demand of the Ford Hunger
March in 1932, held in one of the worst
years of the Great Depression and in
one of the hardest hit cities. Five Detroit
workers were killed and dozens wounded
by Henry Ford’s notorious Service Department. A year later, however, the 30hour week almost became law when the
U.S. Senate passed the Thirty-Hour Week
Act. The Act failed the House by only a
few votes, after business leaders put pressure on Roosevelt to withdraw support.

The shorter workweek was not a new
concept. Some of the earliest demands
that “wage slaves” made on the capitalist class were to reduce their long hours
of toil. In 1791, Philadelphia carpenters
struck for a 10-hour day. By 1840, that
was the norm; the average seven-day
workweek was a full 70 hours.
May 1, 1886, was a day of huge demonstrations around the country for the
eight-hour day. The biggest protests were
in Chicago, where eight leaders were
framed up for a bomb-throwing. On Nov.
11, 1887, four of them were hanged, with
a fifth dying in a jail cell the night before
his scheduled execution. May Day commemorates the battle for the eight-hour
day and honors these martyrs.
While it took a century of fierce class
struggle to achieve it, by 1937 the average
workweek was below 40 hours. However,
many workers still worked 50 or more
hours a week. They conducted frequent —
and often successful — strikes around the
most basic demands for the eight-hour
day and 40-hour week.
With the massive wave of unionization that followed the founding of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations
in 1935, workers gained some say over
the grueling speed of production. Right
around this time, a capitalist consensus
emerged to draw the line at 40 hours: no
30-hour week. Leading the campaign was
a secret Special Conference Committee
comprised of executives of GM, General
Electric, Standard Oil and others, and directed by industrial relations consultant

Edward. S. Cowdrick.
Cowdrick was previously an executive
of Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and
Iron, the perpetrators of the 1914 Ludlow
massacre of striking miners. Cowdrick’s
secret capitalist consortium successfully
lobbied Washington to block any attempt
to pass 30-hour-week legislation.
In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act
established the 40-hour workweek, after which time-and-a-half must be paid.
While the productivity of labor has increased better than fivefold (U.S. Department of Labor; Bureau of Labor Statistics), with the increase highest since the
high-tech revolution, not one amendment
has been passed to shorten the workweek. And the law provides no protection
against mandatory overtime as a condition of employment.
Today, 75 years after the great sitdowns, at least 30 million workers are
unemployed or underemployed. At the
same time, the average weekly hours of
full-time workers are actually higher than
they were in 1945.
The trend towards longer hours for fulltime workers, with a parallel expansion
of the use of temporary and part-time
workers, was described in Juliet Schor’s
1991 bestseller, “The Overworked American.” More workers were working overtime or working more than one job. For
some, overtime was a job requirement;
for others, it was needed to maintain their
standard of living. For low-wage workers,

overtime had become an economic necessity. Yet, while workers were working
harder than ever, average paid vacation
time was falling.
Those trends are continuing. In 2006,
the average number of hours worked per
year was 180 hours more than in 1979.
Twenty percent of male full-time workers
were putting in at least 50 hours a week.
(Juliet Schor, “Less Work, More Living,”
Yes Magazine, Fall 2011)
Overwork continues to have a deleterious effect on health, safety, mental well-being, life expectancy, family
and personal relationships, and the
­environment.
The capitalist class is demanding more
output from the working class and at the
same time driving wages down, making it
harder to get by on a 40-hour paycheck.
Even unionized workers are being pressed
to relinquish paid days off, take fewer and
shorter breaks, and agree to backbreaking
work schedules that undermine the eighthour day.
The twin crises of overwork and mass
unemployment and underemployment
can only be seriously addressed by reviving the demand for a shorter workweek.
It will be an uphill battle — it took more
than a century of hard struggle to win the
eight-hour day — but the need is pressing.
Six-hour day, eight hours pay! Keep depression away!
Next: What happened to the six-hour
day?

New York

Community, unionists march Transit workers
on bank to stop foreclosure want to be paid
By G. Dunkel
New York

Nov. 10 march protests eviction.

By Joyce Sole
Detroit
More than 100 friends and neighbors
of the Cullors family in northwest Detroit, including anti-foreclosure activists
and dozens of unionists, gathered at their
home Nov. 10 to protest the family’s imminent foreclosure and eviction.
The crowd set off through neighborhood streets, chanting and passing out
leaflets. They ended the march at a local
branch of Bank of America, which has
refused to negotiate a loan modification
for homeowners Jerry Cullors and Gail
Cullors. Bank of America officers shut
the doors to the bank and refused to receive a letter of protest.
Jerry Cullors, now a retired bakery
truck driver and member of Teamsters
Local 51, recently took steep pay and
pension cuts when his employer, Wonder

WW photo: Joyce Sole

Bread, went into bankruptcy. This resulted in the couple falling behind on their
mortgage payments. Bank of America led
the Cullors to believe they qualified for a
loan modification, but then began foreclosure proceedings.
On Oct. 30, activists physically staved
off the family’s eviction and prevented
authorities from breaking into the house
and taking their belongings to a curbside
dumpster. Detroit police were prepared
to carry out mass arrests, but an emergency stay was issued by a court that prevented this from happening.
It is expected that neighbors and activists will pack the court on Nov. 13 to show
the judge that the community demands a
stop to this injustice by Bank of America and Fannie Mae, the federal-government-owned entity that now owns the
Cullors’ loan.

A 2011 study from Columbia University estimated that it would take several
weeks, or longer, for the New York City
subway system to recover from a storm
like Sandy. (quartz.com)
The round-the-clock efforts of workers
at the Metropolitan Transit Authority got
all of its system up and running here in
less than two weeks. The Straphangers’
Campaign called this deed “on the edge of
magic.”
MTA management’s reaction to the
storm-imposed crisis situation, however,
was to announce that it would dock the
pay of any worker who failed to come in or
call in Oct. 29 and 30. Those days were the
height of Superstorm Sandy in New York.
What makes the MTA’s threat particularly galling to the transit workers is that
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made the
decision to close all public transportation
in New York at 7 p.m. on Oct. 28 — and
many employees of the public transportation system use that system to get to
work.
The MTA response to this complaint
was that supervisors would arrange a
livery cab if the employee just called in.
One bus dispatcher told Workers World:
“What planet were they living on? Telephone service was out. Neither land lines
nor my cell was working!”
The lack of power to cell towers and to
the cable systems that also provide land
lines, meant that many phones were out of
service, especially in areas of south Brook-

lyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where many subway workers live.
Transport Workers Union Local 100
President John Samuelsen scornfully
said, “How do you shut down the entire
bus and subway system and then penalize people for not getting to work?” (N.Y.
Daily News, Nov. 8)
He said thousands of workers who
“busted their asses” working day and
night getting the system back up and
running now have “the Transit Authority kicking dirt in their face.” YouTube
videos show teams of transit workers
hauling heavy pumps into stations using
ropes and brute force.
The posted TWU statement affirms
that the union is going to fight for the
workers. It says the MTA managers
“show how little respect they have for
their workforce. During the hurricane,
and then during the mammoth effort to
restore service, the MTA praised Local
100 for the incredibly difficult work we
performed. But actions speak louder than
words, and we must never forget this assault on our paychecks. Every worker at
the TA, OA and MTA Bus should remember this.” ­(transportworkers.org)
The lack of foresight and preparation
on the part of the people who run New
York left an essential part of their economy — public mass transit — in jeopardy.
Now they want to compound their mistakes by trying to squeeze a few million
dollars from workers who performed
magnificently to restore a complex system to full function far faster than the experts had predicted.

Page 6

Nov. 22, 2012

workers.org

Hurricane Sandy, climate change and capitalist crisis

Part II

Capitalism’s environmental death spiral
By Fred Goldstein
New York
Perhaps the most profound exposure of
the state of decay of U.S. capitalism is the
way in which its pundits have reacted to
the scientifically proven phenomenon of
climate change and its root causes.
It was only after Hurricane Irene in
2011 that Wall Street began to take extreme weather seriously. Up until then,
it was the Southern states, from Florida
through the Carolinas, which experienced
the brunt of the damage and suffering
from hurricanes.
Even after Hurricane Katrina destroyed
much of New Orleans and displaced hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and
poor people, little was done to prevent a recurrence of this kind of disaster. Droughts
affected mainly the Midwest and South.
Forest fires were in the West. Wall Street
only felt the effects of this extreme weather by increases in insurance costs.
Hurricane Irene threatened the Northeast — New York City in particular. Massive evacuations were carried out in the
city. The transportation system was shut
down for the first time. But, although water washed over the walls along the Hudson River with a nine-foot storm surge and
the tide came within feet of the subways
and tunnels, the city dodged the bullet.
That storm did $15.6 billion in damage
in the U.S., another billion in the Caribbean, killed 57 people and caused record
power outages. But the heavy part missed
New York.
It was just a matter of time. Irene
should have been the handwriting on the
wall. But other than making some slight
improvements in agency coordination
and putting supplies and transport in
place, not much else was done. The message, however, was clear: Global warming
can bring disaster, not only to Bangladesh

or the Maldives or sub-Saharan Africa or
Bolivia and other areas oppressed by imperialism, and not just to the masses of
the Southeast and Midwest, but to Washington and Wall Street.
All the scientific warnings given to
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change at all its conferences since Kyoto
in 1997 should have rung true after Irene
hit. And if any further confirmation was
needed, this summer as much as one-third
of the U.S. wheat and corn crop was wiped
out by record droughts and 100-degree
days. This was felt by agribusiness, the
commodity markets and traders on Wall
Street.
However, the campaign by right-wing
ideologists in recent years had pushed
off-limits any public discussion of climate
change by the media or big-business politicians, including Romney and Obama.
Critics call this “climate silence.”
Breaking climate silence —
to cover for the polluters
Hurricane Sandy broke the climate silence. Business Week has a cover story
on climate change entitled “It’s Global
Warming, Stupid.” Time magazine’s cover is “Lessons from the Storm” and deals
with climate change. Nicholas Kristof’s
conservative column in the New York
Times was “Will Climate Get Some Respect Now?” The New Yorker, the New
York Times editorial page and many other
bourgeois voices that had remained muted or silent under the regime of climate
change censorship have been emboldened
and pressured by the magnitude of the
disaster. They have opened up a counterattack against the right and against the
anti-scientific views that have prevailed in
bourgeois politics around global warming.
The ruling-class media and politicians
finally split over Hurricane Sandy and the
ongoing social and economic disaster. But

Still reeling from U.S. wars
Iraq

even those who now affirm climate change
as a great problem caused by human activity are in denial about the polluters
responsible for it. Their tepid rejoinders
reveal the complete bankruptcy of the capitalist establishment in dealing with what
is a growing global environmental crisis of
life-threatening proportions.
One cannot find a single commentator
of any authority within the establishment
who goes beyond a discussion of building
sea gates, imposing carbon taxes, passing
fuel emission standards for automobiles
and so forth.
No one is pointing the finger at the oil
companies, the gas companies, the coal
companies, the power industry, the giant
industrial corporations, the auto industry, and all the corporate interests that
have been behind climate censorship.
No one has pointed the finger at the
corporate polluters whose think tanks
and foundations poison the political atmosphere with right-wing ideology and
who pay scientists-for-hire to denounce
scientific findings that are universally
held and verified by research.
No one has shown how the industry
lobbyists have a stranglehold on politicians up to the presidential level, causing
all U.S. presidents and their representatives to go from international conference
to international conference, year after
year, shooting down global attempts to
stop the corporate polluters.
The U.S ruling class has defied governments that represent the vast majority of
the peoples of the world for two decades
now in its campaign to protect corporate
rights to pollute for profit.
In fact, it is the polluters and the bankers who finance them who are really the
most powerful interests at the summit of
the U.S. ruling class.
The idea of renewable energy is anathema to big oil, big coal and all the ancillary
interests connected to the energy, power
and industrial companies. They own trillions of dollars worth of carbon-based
fuel and are spending billions scouring
the globe right now for new discoveries.
Trying to force these corporate predators
out of the channels that bring in trillions
in profits is like trying to force Niagara
Falls to flow upward.
Drilling for oil in the melted Arctic

The Pentagon launched the Desert
Storm war against Iraq in January of
1991, destroying much of Baghdad’s water and sewage infrastructure with savage
bombing raids. Strict sanctions against
Iraq prevented full recovery in the 1990s,
and the 2003 imperialist invasion added
to the damage.
After five years of occupation, this 2008
photo from Sadr City in Baghdad shows
Iraqi children drinking water from these
wrecked pipes. Cholera, a gastrointestinal
disease, and typhoid, which had been virtually eradicated in Iraq by 1989, made a

comeback under the Western imperialist
occupation. Today, the electricity and water supply systems in Baghdad are in even
worse condition than in 2008.
A couple million people in the Northeast U.S. have just experienced Superstorm Sandy and the collateral suffering
produced by capitalist climate change and
neglect of the infrastructure. The poorest
and most oppressed have also received the
least relief. This has placed them closer to
the Iraqis, who have suffered for 22 years
from the Pentagon’s direct destruction.
— John Catalinotto

A case in point is the melting of the
Arctic. This is caused by global warming,
which is caused by greenhouse gases being trapped in the atmosphere. These gases are emitted by fossil fuel — mostly oil
and coal. The energy companies are the
main culprits. Their activity has dangerously accelerated the melting of the Arctic. An ice sheet the size of Rhode Island
recently broke off in Greenland.
What has been the reaction of the oil
companies to the melting of the Arctic ice?
Now that they have more access to the
Arctic Ocean because of glacial melting,
there is a race to drill for more oil there.
This in turn will cause more ice to melt
and lead to further increases in the rise of
ocean levels and a warmer atmosphere.
This is a death spiral for the environment and for hundreds of millions who
live in island and coastal civilizations,
including New York City, which has just
been inundated for the first time in a significant way.
It is a death spiral for the hundreds of
millions whose arable land is being turned
to desert, whose fertile valleys and plains
are drying up, and whose rivers run lower
and lower as mountain snows and glaciers

disappear.
All this is the environmental equivalent
of the capitalist financial and economic
death spiral, whereby the economic system
is grinding to a halt. Just in the U.S., tens of
millions are unemployed, underemployed
and/or underpaid. This economic slowdown reaches around the world.
In this environment of mass poverty,
the bankers and bondholders in Europe
are demanding massive cutbacks in services and wages. In the U.S. the same
is being done regarding Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid and other services.
The only possible result of such cutbacks
will be further poverty and further crisis
of the system.
It is absolutely necessary to wage a
daily struggle against the polluters of the
earth, whether to stop them from fracking,
clear-cutting and mountaintop mining or
from destroying the rain forests and polluting the rivers and aquifers. Everyone
has a right and a duty to try to slow down,
if not reverse, the course of capitalist environmental destruction.
But it must be understood that to
change the social and economic priorities
of the country, to stop the mighty powers
of big business and finance capital that
garner fabulous profits from destructive
industrial and chemical processes, an entire reorganization of society is required.
The political superstructure and the
economic foundation of society are in the
hands of the ruling class that is doing the
polluting and causing climate change.
That goes for both big-business parties,
the Republicans and the Democrats.
Fight the right
The destruction caused by Hurricane
Sandy should give progressive and revolutionary forces an opening to attack the
right-wing ideology that has been so pervasive, going back to the Reagan era and
deepening since the coming of Tea Party
Republicanism, which has cowed much of
the Democratic Party and pushed it to the
right.
It is time to take the offensive. The people need more services, not less. It is the
working class and the oppressed, as well as
sections of the middle class, whose deficits
have been aggravated by Hurricane Sandy.
It is time to answer the deficit hawks
who want to hand over social service money to the bankers and avoid the so-called
“fiscal cliff.” Instead of worrying about the
problems of the bondholders and bankers,
it is time to make them and the polluters
pay to restore the welfare of the millions
who have been damaged, displaced, lost
jobs and wages, lost homes and loved
ones, and had their lives turned upside
down. The workers and the oppressed are
being pushed over the “hardship cliff.”
Their deficit is increasing.
If Hurricane Sandy shows anything, it
shows that the mass of the people must
fight back and ultimately take over the
vast apparatus that is being used to pollute
the environment.
Need science for the people
Thousands of research scientists in
universities depend on corporate contributions and are subject to guidance and
control by administrations beholden to
the polluters. Thousands more work in
the laboratories of the oil companies, the
chemical companies, the coal companies
and so on.
All this scientific brainpower must be reorganized to serve society. These researchContinued on page 10

workers.org

Nov. 22, 2012

Page 7

Workers World, IAC deliver aid to Occupy Sandy
By Teresa Gutierrez
New York
Members and supporters of Workers
World Party and the International Action
Center helped to deliver more than a vanload of material aid that these groups had
gathered to Occupy Sandy — the Occupy
movement’s response to Hurricane Sandy
— on Nov. 11.
It was an important experience and
an important gesture of solidarity. Many
activists brought in badly needed aid, including diapers, baby wipes, clothes, food,
batteries and more. One WWP member
organized some of her co-workers, who
brought in bags full of relief items.
Occupy forces are very much engaged
in efforts to support survivors of the
storm. On Nov. 11, they issued a call for
volunteers to help house the more than
40,000 people who are now or will soon

become homeless. At the distribution site
in Brooklyn activists held a consciousness-raising, anti-racist political orientation on how to present the aid to the affected communities. A young white man
described how the term “looting” is a racist term that is mainly used against Black
and Latino/a communities.
The distribution site was buzzing with
activity. Carloads and even a small U-Haul
truck of aid were contributed by many volunteers. The area was so heavy with activity that Occupy Sandy organizers had to
assign traffic coordinators to make sure
donations were not blocking traffic.
Thousands of people remain without
heat in Sunset Park, Coney Island, the
Rockaways and Staten Island. While the
temperature in New York is warm during
the day for this time of year — as a result
of the same global warming that caused
Hurricane Sandy — it is still very cold at

Occupy Sandy

WW photo: Anne Pruden

night and will get colder in the days to
come. The victims of Hurricane Sandy in
the most oppressed areas had to weather a freezing northeaster snow storm on
Nov. 7. Entire neighborhoods, especially

some of the housing projects, have been
devastated and are still without power.
Many see an ominous plan to use the occasion of the hurricane to shut these projects down altogether.
It is important to continue to engage
in this struggle of working and oppressed
people for survival, including continuing
to provide material aid. There is nothing
stronger than material aid provided with
a political program.
The aid gatherers are no longer taking
winter clothes. They must be selective
about what will meet the needs of the people. What is needed are cleaning supplies,
batteries, flashlights, diapers and other
such materials. For more information visit interoccupy.net/occupysandy/.

Letter to the editor:

On the ground
Sanitation and other p­ ublic with Occupy Sandy
In Sandy’s aftermath,

workers deserve support
By a New York City Sanitation
Department Worker
On top of sanitation workers laboring
12-hour workdays and seven-day workweeks, needed nonstop to clean up the
city after Hurricane Sandy, one of the
workers’ biggest problems is the difficulty
of obtaining fuel to get to work. According
to the president of the sanitation workers’ union, Harry Nespoli: “They want to
work but they have to have gas. People are
saying that they’re not going to give gas
to Sanitation Workers. That’s a total disgrace.” (thechiefleader.com, Nov. 9)
In the aftermath of the storm, gas stations hit by shortages and long lines of
customers are also often closing at night,
the only time sanitation workers can access them after long shifts.
Sanitation workers who live in the
Rockaways, Coney Island, Red Hook,
Long Island, Staten Island and other
hard-hit areas of the city have been staying in sanitation garages with no electricity and no heat since the storm began on
Oct. 29. The job of sanitation workers has
been transformed into one of cleaning
up memories of New Yorkers’ homes destroyed perhaps forever — resembling the
mission of rescue workers dispatched to a
war-ravaged city.
Hurricane Sandy has caused sanitation
workers many injuries, including from
downed live electrical wires abutting uncollected debris. A co-worker of this reporter had to be hospitalized after stepping on a bed of nails immersed in a pile
of debris. A year ago he had been injured
when he was stuck by a half dozen hypodermic needles that had been deposited in
a trash bag.
Racism compounds workers’ misery
One sanitation worker from Staten
Island, Damian Moore, and his African-American spouse, Glenda Moore,
suffered an unimaginable tragedy when
their two sons, Connor, 4, and Brendan,
2, were swept from their mother’s arms
by floodwaters. As she tried to escape in
a sports utility vehicle to Brooklyn, she
found she could no longer drive, so she
got out to look for help. The children’s
aunt said Moore banged on the door of a
nearby house, but the occupants turned

her away in a racist fashion, telling her,
“I don’t know you. I’m not going to help
you.” (nydailynews.com, Nov. 9)
The boys were found dead three days
later. Three hundred sanitation workers
were temporarily released from storm
cleanup duties to attend the brothers’
Nov. 9 funeral.
Bad treatment of sanitation workers is
not new in New York City. On Dec. 26, 2010,
a powerful storm dumped 20 to 32 inches
of heavy snow on the East Coast from the
Carolinas to Canada over 36 hours. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration sabotaged snow removal operations with bad decisions, such as ordering
the department not to salt major streets
and highways prior to the storm, as had
been city policy for decades.
Several New Yorkers died when ambulances failed to get through the snow-covered streets. Mass transit was slow to
nonexistent. Hit by heavy public criticism, the mayor’s office, along with much
of the corporate-owned mass media, tried
to deflect anger by treating the sanitation
workers — who were heroically battling
the snow — like Public Enemy Number
One. Anti-labor politicians and racist tabloids spread an unproven allegation that
a “worker slowdown” had impeded the
snow removal operations. The City Council and the NYC Department of Investigation in June 2011 concluded that this
allegation had been totally false.
Nespoli, also the chair of the Municipal
Labor Committee representing more than
90 city worker unions, told this reporter
that the thanks Bloomberg is showing
sanitation workers — and about 200,000
other municipal workers — is offering all
of us a huge pay cut, with two annual zero-percent raises and a huge increase in
paycheck deductions for health insurance.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, whom my union now calls “The Prince
of Darkness” because of his anti-labor policies, is threatening to repeal the Triborough Amendment. That, in return for the
no-strike provisions of the Taylor Law,
guarantees city workers our current wages
and economic benefits when our contracts
expire. In cahoots with Cuomo, Bloomberg
has conveniently allowed all city worker
contracts to expire. But city workers plan
to fight this and all anti-union tactics.

Dear Editor:
As part of a delegation from Workers
World Party and the People’s Power Assembly movement, I was able to witness
firsthand the “Occupy Sandy” hurricane
relief operation. Launched by a handful of Occupy activists just one day after
the hurricane devastated coastal areas
of Brooklyn and Staten Island, the effort
has mushroomed into a major — and exemplary — people’s power initiative that
shows the tremendous impact of people-to-people solidarity.
There are now several operations centers and numerous field distribution
points in various parts of Brooklyn and
Staten Island providing relief to tens of
thousands of hurricane victims in New
York's coastal areas.
At the operation center I worked in
— located in a large Episcopal church in
Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood
nestled between downtown Brooklyn and
the massive Bedford Stuyvesant community just beyond it — our delegation was
greeted by Easton, an Occupy activist
we first met on picket lines in support of
cafeteria workers at his college. Easton
plugged us in to a five-minute sidewalk
orientation with 8-10 other new arrivals, provided by another Occupy activist,
who quickly explained the operation’s
highlights — collection and distribution
of food and other emergency needs like
flashlights and batteries, and the current
oversupply of shoes and clothing.
Within minutes we were urged to commit ourselves to the effort however possible: as sorters, canvassers, drivers, coordinators, computer specialists, medical
workers, contributors, or whatever. Literally hundreds of volunteers were integrated into the effort during the few hours I
was there to witness it.
There was a coordinator or dispatch
center for each of the functions. One
orientee was immediately recruited to
“shadow” a coordinator who needed relief. I reported to the driver dispatch
desk in the rear of the church sanctuary,
where a cluster of four or five organizers
put drivers’ information into their laptop
computers and advised us they would call
us as soon as we could be sent out.
Recent arrivals formed a “bucket line”
that continually transported new arrivals
of relief supplies. Behind and beside the
dispatchers, a large mass of recently arrived goods were sorted and bagged. In

the church pews, teams matched the bundles to specific requests transmitted from
the communications crew working in a
room next to the choir loft.
Downstairs in the church basement,
a massive kitchen and food preparation
team was at work at five long lines of tables. A crew of at least a hundred people —
women, children and men — prepared basic lunch bags with peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches, fruit and cupcakes, while hot
food offerings like chili, pasta and casseroles were cooking in the kitchen.
On the church steps, an Occupy organizer I had met in Bloombergville – the
2011 budget protest occupation at New
York’s City Hall which preceded Occupy Wall Street — was giving an in-depth
orientation to people who would be canvassers. He explained the vision and philosophy of the Occupy Sandy initiative:
mutual aid, with respect and sensitivity,
awareness that the hurricane’s victims
add this most recent tragedy to a long list
of hardships and general oppression.
He urged canvassers and distributors
to listen carefully to people hurt in the
storm, and be aware their needs are multiple. The Occupy Sandy effort must rely,
he said, on the leaders who have already
emerged among the victims in their communities, and find ways to support and
strengthen them — aware that the current
stage of grappling with the storm’s immediate impact will be followed by stages of
rebuilding, and resisting efforts to displace the victims instead of helping them.
The orientation made it clear that while
the storms were natural disasters, their
underlying cause was a decades-long refusal by energy corporations and politicians that serve them to deal with climate
change caused by overuse of fossil fuel.
All the Occupy orienters made it clear
that the underlying cause of the disaster is
capitalism, and that the fundamental goal
of this relief effort is to develop a new way
of responding that replaces the oppressive hierarchies of the capitalist system
with solidarity and people’s power.
I was proud to see comrades I knew
taking roles along with other volunteers
in this effort, which appears to be a genuine glimpse of a future in which people
come together in a conscious and highly
organized way to help each other, and in
the process give birth to a better way of
organizing society.
– Dee Knight

Page 8

Nov. 22, 2012

workers.org

Revolutionary reflections on bourgeois elections
By Kris Hamel
Under capitalism, especially here in
the United States, so-called “democracy”
serves the wealthy. Whoever wins elections, the Pentagon and weapons industry still get funding, imperialist wars and
occupations go on, the rich get tax breaks,
while workers and the poor face more layoffs, cutbacks and attacks.
Election campaigns cost hundreds of
millions of dollars. The U.S. Supreme
Court intensified this aspect of U.S. democracy by allowing billionaires to fund
super PACs (political action committees)
with unlimited millions and letting corporations, deemed to be “persons,” make
exorbitant campaign contributions.
In the 2012 presidential election, incumbent Democratic President Barack
Obama outraised and outspent Republican Mitt Romney, but just barely. The
candidates, through affiliated super PACS
and donors, raised a combined $1.82 billion. As of Oct. 17, Obama still had $134.7
million in cash on hand, while Romney
had $193.3 million. (New York Times,
Nov. 12)
Romney benefited from the very richest donors. Obama also got Wall Street
backing, but received more small contributions and money from unions, women,
women’s and reproductive rights organizations, the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer community, environmental
groups and others.
The staggering amounts needed to
run effective campaigns virtually shut
out smaller parties. Candidates who are
not Democrats or Republicans have little
chance to crash the corporate-owned media. It is difficult and costly just to get on
the ballot.
Nevertheless, to the extent that they

provide information about political and
social trends, the elections are analyzed
by revolutionaries. They reveal the mood
of the working class and help prepare for
real battles to come. These decisive battles will not be won in the ballot box, but
in the streets by the masses of workers
and oppressed.
Right wing repudiated by voters
This election showed a repudiation of
the politics and agenda of the most reactionary, right-wing elements in the U.S.,
especially by women, African Americans
and Latinos/as, workers and the poor of
many nationalities, and LGBTQ people.
Obama’s reelection and the Congressional vote leave the status quo largely in
place, but the deep rightward shift that
Tea Party billionaires and anti-woman
reactionaries had bet on didn’t happen.
Exit polls revealed that Mitt Romney
took 59 percent of votes by whites, 52
percent of men, and 78 percent of white
evangelical Christians. Obama won 55
percent of women voters, 60 percent of
those 30 years old and younger, 93 percent of African-American votes, and more
than 70 percent of Latinos/as and Asian
peoples. (NYT, Nov. 12) While Republicans won more seats in the House of Representatives, they actually lost the popular vote. Their gains came from intensive
gerrymandering of state districts.
Ballot proposals and initiatives —
which usually represent a more democratic, although still costly, measure of
the electorate’s desires — provided some
progressive results, not the least of which
was legalizing same-sex marriage in four
states; overturning some local and state
marijuana laws that have given cops a
legal weapon to harass and arrest youth,
especially youth of color; and overturning

Michigan’s racist (financial) emergency
manager law that allowed the state to try
to take control of cities like Detroit.
How rapidly change can come
Just two short years ago, the reactionary tide was seemingly winning the day.
The ultra-right, racist Tea Party was riding high and helped the ultra-conservative wing of the ruling class retake control
of the House of Representatives. It was a
big defeat for the Obama administration
and Democratic Party supporters.
Some in the progressive movement
felt they had to squelch their own independent demands challenging Obama on
such issues as war, the environment and
the economic crisis because of accusations
that this would only help the ultra-right.
In the African-American and other oppressed communities, there was serious,
justified concern about increased racism
in response to the first African-American
president in U.S. history.
But was there really a broad social base
for the Tea Party, which quickly gained
media attention and was pumped up by
millionaires’ money? This vote shows that
the predicted swing to the right among
the masses hasn’t happened.
Instead, the working class — the majority of the U.S. population, whether
they vote or not — has undergone a tremendous change over the course of the
last three decades. It is no longer dominated by higher-paid white males, who
have been more easily swayed by the ruling class’ divide-and-conquer use of racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ bigotry and
oppression. Continuing capitalist restructuring has been driving down wages and
eliminating skilled jobs at the same time
that more women and people of color
have entered the work force, where they

have helped revive militancy and solidarity in unions and in general.
In February 2011, after Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker and his cronies in the state
legislature rammed through anti-union
laws that undermined public workers and
their right to collective bargaining, a general working-class uprising began in that
state. The State Capitol was occupied for
weeks by workers and their supporters,
notably students, not just from Wisconsin but around the U.S., with international support.
Some six months after that, the Occupy
Wall Street movement began in earnest,
led by youth with no future other than
low-paid jobs and never-ending pay-back
of massive student loans. That movement
is still alive. OWS is providing major relief
aid to the masses in New York and New
Jersey devastated by the recent hurricane.
Neither capitalist party can provide the
millions of jobs that are sorely needed.
Neither can provide a plan that puts the
needs and interests of the workers and
oppressed first. Neither has an answer to
the economic crisis still engulfing the U.S.
and the rest of the capitalist world.
Conditions are ripening for intensified
working-class fightback, not just against
cuts and austerity but against the capitalist system itself and for a socialist future
— where planning for people’s needs, not
profits for the rich, is the guiding light
of society. A revolutionary Marxist vanguard party is an indispensable ingredient for that victorious struggle.
Hamel is a managing editor of
Workers World. From 1990 to 2006 she
represented Workers World Party in
five revolutionary election campaigns
for Michigan seats ranging from U.S.
Senator to State Representative. Email
khamel@workers.org

PA environmental dept. fronts for frackers
By Betsey Piette
Philadelphia
For years, Pennsylvania families living
near natural gas drilling activity have relied on the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to determine if hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was impacting
their well water. Little did they know that
the DEP was systematically withholding
information on potential contamination
by issuing incomplete test results.
This practice, dating back to 1991, was
confirmed by the testimony of DEP employees Tara Upadhyay and John Carson
in connection with a lawsuit brought by
eight Washington County homeowners
against Range Resources and 12 of its
subcontractors.
John Smith, an attorney representing
the plaintiffs, described the DEP’s water
contamination findings as “based on a
system designed not to identify contamination.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 2)
Under oath, Upadhyay, a DEP Bureau
of Laboratories technical director, stated
that the DEP’s lab identified volatile organic compounds, known components
of fracking fluid, in one plaintiff’s water
well. Exposure to these compounds has
been linked to serious sinus, skin, neurological, liver and kidney problems. Yet the
agency’s letter to the plaintiff dismissed
these findings as laboratory error, claiming his water was not contaminated by
drilling activity 3,000 feet from his home.
While water may be tested for 24 metals related to gas drilling under state
guidelines, reports given to homeowners
routinely identify only eight of them: bar-

ium, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, sodium and strontium.
Depositions from the DEP whistle-blowers alleged that the presence of
other heavy metals, including boron,
chromium, cobalt, lithium and titanium, are tested for but deliberately not
reported, even when levels violate safe
drinking water standards. Testing results
for the volatile organic compounds acetone, chloroform and t-butyl alcohol are
also not reported. These compounds, as
well as several of the omitted metals, are
known fracking-related contaminants
and carcinogens.
The tainted DEP reports have often
been used to dismiss claims of Pennsylvanians who suspect their water and their
family’s health are at risk from drilling.
Complaints about water contamination
in legal cases in Washington County, the
Woodlands area of Butler County near
Pittsburgh and Dimock in Susquehanna County were all dismissed because
of DEP’s reports. This limited reporting
clearly serves the Marcellus Shale natural
gas industry’s claim that fracking is “perfectly safe.”

Adding insult to injury, DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said, “That the lab is
capable of doing additional analysis for
a particular investigation doesn’t mean
that our analysis was inadequate or incomplete.” (Associated Press, Nov. 2)
Sunday also threatened that “the DEP
may not be able to invoke the presumption
of liability to hold drillers [responsible]”
if people don’t allow the gas companies
to do pre-drill sampling. This sampling
supposedly determines if contamination
existed before drilling. (Shalereporter.
com Nov. 3)
In his deposition, Carson, a DEP water quality specialist, stated that a special
lab code, “942 Suite,” is used for Marcellus Shale water contamination complaints. Upadhyay confirmed that this
code means “don’t test for or report on
certain chemicals” found in fracking fluid, limiting the information going back to
DEP field offices and to property owners.
Suite codes 942 and 946 are also used by
the DEP to omit or hide testing for drilling-related compounds.
Pennsylvania DEP Director Michael
Krancer has publicly stated that “at the

end of the day, my job is to get gas done.”
Krancer was appointed by the current
and openly pro-drilling governor, Tom
Corbett. He directed DEP investigators
to not issue violation notices to shale gas
drillers, even when an active leak or major violation is ongoing, without first getting approval from the state’s capital in
Harrisburg. A storm of protest forced the
reversal of this policy.
Despite DEP claims that the omitted
chemicals were not linked to fracking, a
2009 study clearly connects them to the
practice. In samplings of water at 19 locations before and after fracking, the
study found several of the metals in the
post-fracking flowback water. The study,
“Sampling and Analysis of Water Streams
Associated with the Development of Marcellus Shale Gas,” was prepared for the
industry-funded Marcellus Shale Coalition. (Shalereporter.com, Nov. 3)
State Rep. Jesse White called for state
and federal government investigations of
the DEP for alleged misconduct and fraud,
calling the situation “beyond outrageous.”
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 2)

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Nov. 22, 2012

Page 9

U.S., Britain escalate threats against Syria
By David Sole
The United States and Britain appear
to be moving closer to direct intervention
against the Bashar al-Assad government
of Syria. With support inside Syria declining for the puppet “rebel” forces, the imperialist powers are being driven to even
more desperate military measures to fulfill their goal of “regime change.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron,
visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan
last week, called on Britain and the U.S.
to do more “to hasten the end of this regime.” RT news headlined Cameron’s
push for an end to the European Union
arms embargo enacted in 2011 (Nov. 9),
which would free Western powers to send
a greater quantity and more sophisticated
weapons to the “Free Syrian Army.” These
weapons would be in addition to arms
now being funneled through Saudi Arabia
and other proxies.
Turkey has publicly called for the U.S.
and NATO to place batteries of Patriot missiles along its border with Syria. The New
York Times, citing a Turkish newspaper,
revealed Nov. 7 that “Turkey had agreed
with the United States on a plan to use the
missiles in an offensive capacity to create
safe zones in Syria.” An expanded version

of this plan would see Patriot missiles also
placed along the Jordan-Syria border.
The reach of these Patriot missiles
could give the Syrian so-called “rebels” —
who are really counterrevolutionaries or
contras — the chance to seize what they
haven’t been able to on their own: control
of a major city. Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, lies within the potential no-fly zone. If
the contra-rebels were successful in seizing Aleppo, the West could then “recognize” them as the “legitimate government
of Syria” and “accept” their invitation to
directly intervene militarily. This is precisely the imperialist playbook that was
followed in Libya with the takeover of
Benghazi.
Major problems still hinder these
U.S.-British plans. The Syrian opposition
is plagued by internal division, jealousies
and competing ideologies. A meeting convened at the demand of the U.S. in Doha,
Qatar, on Nov. 8, has been trying to hammer together these disparate Syrian elements for four days. Reuters claims that
an agreement was signed for a new government-in-exile and military body. (Nov.
11) Yet in the same report it states that the
talks “appeared to fall through” after marathon bargaining that lasted until 3 a.m.
on Nov. 11.

Agence France-Presse states that the
fractious parties “agreed in principle … on
a plan to unite against President Bashar
al-Assad” after intense pressure from the
U.S. and other backers. (Nov. 11) But then
AFP reports that “details” were holding
up the signing and that the parties needed
“time to study the internal rules.”
In any case, it is clear that all the factions are creatures of the Western powers,
bending to the will of the U.S., Britain,
France and their allies.
Waning support inside Syria for the
counterrevolutionary forces is also driving the U.S. toward direct military intervention. A lead article in the Nov. 8 New
York Times describes how they “are losing
crucial support from a public increasingly disgusted by the actions of some rebels, including poorly planned missions,
senseless destruction, criminal behavior
and the coldblooded killing of prisoners.”
The fighting has, by all estimates, killed
around 40,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps.
The Times report includes many details
of criminal actions by armed individuals
and groups of contras. In the town of
Saraqib, contras drove Syrian government troops from a milk factory and then
proceeded to destroy it, depriving the

population of this crucial product.
Of greater importance is the emphasis
the Times gives to the failure of the contras to capture and hold Aleppo in their
September offensive: “The fighting failed
to achieve the turning point the rebels had
promised. … The Aleppo battle catalyzed
simmering frustrations among civilian
activists who feel dominated by gunmen.”
Many Syrians are concerned with the
rising influence of extremist sectarian
contra groups that have similarities to
al-Qaida — an additional reason the U.S.
government has been pressing for a new
and centralized opposition at the Doha
conference.
In Damascus, President al-Assad made
it clear that he had no intention of leaving Syria to any neocolonial group. In an
interview with Russia Today he stated: “I
am not a puppet. I was not made by the
West to go to the West or to any other
country. I am Syrian. I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”
(Nov. 8)
The West is also being hindered by the
support given so far to the al-Assad government by China and Russia, especially
these countries’ vetoes in the United Nations Security Council to proposals for a
U.N. cover for imperialist intervention.

Africa

U.S. foreign policy to remain imperialistic
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
With Barack Obama’s reelection as
president of the leading imperialist state
in the world, the Obama administration
will continue along the same foreign policy
trajectory as in its first term: exploitation
of the labor and resources of oppressed
peoples and the intensification of militarism in Africa, the Middle East, Central
Asia and other geopolitical regions. The
Obama administration enhanced the role
of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM),
started under the Bush presidency, and
led a war of regime change against the oilrich nation of Libya, resulting in the brutal assassination of martyred leader Col.
Moammar Gadhafi.
The upsurges in Egypt and Tunisia in
2011 shook up the U.S. and its allies in the
region. However, the governments that
have come to power in these countries
have not fundamentally changed their
relationships with imperialism. Palestine
is still under Israeli siege despite a new
government in Egypt, and the regime in
Tunisia was compelled to turn over the
former prime minister of Libya to the
CIA-installed junta in Libya.
The economic damage done to the
world capitalist system as a result of imperialist war has been enormous. The economies of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan
and Haiti have all been devastated.
Imperialist militarism will escalate
Under the Obama administration the
Horn of Africa nation of Somalia has
become an outpost of U.S. imperialism.
With a military base in neighboring Djibouti at Camp Lemonier, the Somalia
nation is a staging ground for military
operations against the Islamist resistance
movement Al-Shabab.
At present more than 17,000 U.S.backed troops from the African Union
Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) are stationed in Somalia. These troops are

trained and financed by the Pentagon with
full political support of the White House.
Somalia is a source of growing oil exploration. In the breakaway northern region of Puntland, oil is already being extracted by Canadian and British firms.
In fact, throughout the entire regions
of East and Central Africa, new findings
of oil, natural gas and various strategic
minerals are fueling the increased presence of transnational corporations and
military forces from the U.S., Britain,
Israel and the European Union. Drones
and fighter aircraft are flooding into the
area under the guise of fighting “terrorism” and “piracy.”
The presence of the U.S. and other imperialist states in Central and East Africa
has not stabilized the political situation at
all. The plight of the people has actually
worsened under the Obama administration, with widespread dislocation in Somalia and Ethiopia as well as the spread
of war into Kenya.
Kenya has deployed several thousand
of its defense forces in southern Somalia
at the behest of the U.S. administration.
The southern Somalia port city of Kismayo has been seized by the Kenya Defense Forces and AMISOM.
The Israeli Air Force bombed the country of Sudan in late October. A military
factory was targeted at the same time that
Sudan and Iran were engaged in joint military exercises around Port Sudan.
This was not the first time that Israel
has bombed Sudan. These provocations
are also designed to send a clear message
to Iran that Israel can strike there, too.
Sudan is still under sanctions imposed by
the U.S. and other imperialist states. Formerly the largest geographic nation-state
in Africa, Sudan has been partitioned between the North and the South, and other
efforts are ongoing to break away the Darfur region in the west of the country.
Last October, at the height of the Occupy
Movement across the U.S., the Obama administration announced the deployment

of at least 100 Special Forces and military
trainers to Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. These U.S. military forces were purportedly dispatched
to hunt down Joseph Kony of the Lord’s
Resistance Army. The campaign known as
“Invisible Children” was launched through
social media on the internet.
The entire operation was designed to
deflect attention away from mass demonstrations taking place, throughout the
U.S. and the world, against Wall Street
financiers and the impact of their policies
of exploitation and oppression. It was also
aimed at creating confusion about the
role of the U.S. military within Africa and
other parts of the world.
In West Africa, the imperialists are planning an intervention in Mali to put down
a rebellion in the north of the country by
the Tuareg people. The Mali crisis is partly
related to the Pentagon-NATO destabilization of Libya, as thousands of Tuaregs
were displaced as a result of the 2011 war.
Malian armed forces staged a coup
against President Amadou Toumani Touré
in March, despite the fact that the U.S. has
maintained close ties with the Malian army
through AFRICOM training and joint maneuver projects. The coup leaders said that
the military takeover was related to the
government’s failure to quell the Tuareg
rebellion. Nevertheless, the situation in the
north worsened after the coup, leading to a
declaration of independence by the Movement for the Liberation of Azawad and
other regional Islamist groups.
In November, the U.N. Security Council announced that some 3,300 troops
provided by the member-states of the
Economic Community of West African
States will be sent to Mali to put down the
Tuareg rebellion. However, Pentagon and
E.U. military forces will provide the logistics and funding for this operation, which
will inevitably benefit imperialism in its
drive for resources and profits.
In South Africa the rising tide of the

labor movement is challenging the transnational mining industry. An outbreak of
wildcat strikes is weakening the neoliberal policies of the ruling African National
Congress and their allies within the Congress of South African Trade Unions and
the South African Communist Party.
A broad-based debate within the national liberation movement in South Africa is taking place over the future of the
struggle, which after 18 years has still not
reached the objectives outlined by the
Freedom Charter of 1955. The South African revolution must move toward socialism, or it will face even greater contradictions and internal strife.
In Zimbabwe, the ruling Zimbabwe
African National Union Patriotic Front
party has consolidated the comprehensive land redistribution program, and
is moving toward greater control of the
mining industry, which is linked with the
same sectors in neighboring South Africa.
Throughout the Southern Africa region,
the former liberation movements are
once again enhancing their dialogue and
political coordination.
The anti-war and anti-imperialist movements in the U.S. must follow the situation
in Africa very closely. These movements
must be prepared to politically defend the
various movements and states that are under threat by imperialism.
Unemployment in the Western industrialized states has not been as high since
the Great Depression of the 1930s. Poverty and social misery are increasing even
within the advanced capitalist countries.
As economic conditions of the workers
and the oppressed inside the U.S. and the
imperialist countries grow more desperate every day, the aggressive military actions against the peoples of the so-called
developing states will intensify. Consequently, the workers and oppressed of the
West must form closer alliances in order
to coordinate political actions with their
counterparts in the developing and oppressed nations.

Page 10

Nov. 22, 2012

workers.org

editorial

Which ‘cliff’ should
we be talking about?

A

lot of workers in all the capitalist
countries feel like they’ve fallen over
a cliff. The ground under their feet
has disappeared, along with their jobs,
homes and plans for the future.
But that’s not what U.S. politicians
mean when they warn about a “fiscal cliff.”
They’re talking about some tax and spending measures that would automatically go
into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, unless Congress
passes a bill to reduce the budget deficit.
The right wing in particular uses this
scary phrase in order to pressure the
Obama administration to go along with
budget cuts that are highly unpopular —
such as cuts to Social Security, Medicare
and Medicaid. On Nov. 11, Bob Woodward,
the Washington Post reporter who broke
the Watergate scandal, appeared on NBCTV’s “Meet the Press” with a document
confirming that the Obama administration’s “last offer” to the Republicans would
cut spending for these programs. The GOP
rejected the offer anyway — setting up the
“fiscal cliff” scenario.
Social Security was signed into law in
1935, during the depths of the Depression
and a time of working class radicalism.
It was to be a separate trust fund, not to
be touched for other government needs.
Workers paid into it like a savings account,
along with their employers, so that when
they retired they would be guaranteed an
income to live on. However, the federal
government regularly borrows from the
fund, replacing the cash with Treasury
bonds, so that the health of the fund depends on whether the promised “full faith
and credit” of the capitalist government is
reliable.
That faith has been shaken. During
the Bush administration, when military
spending began to soar as hundreds of
thousands of U.S. troops invaded Iraq and
Afghanistan, the government’s budget
deficit soared along with it.
Tax cuts for the rich, but not for workers
The deficit — and the federal debt —
have risen not only because more money
was going out, but also because less money
has been coming in.
Back in the 1950s, when Dwight D.
Eisenhower was president and the U.S.
was in fierce competition with the Soviet
Union, those in the top tax bracket — with
incomes over $400,000 — were supposed
to pay 92 percent of that in income taxes.
Of course, they could afford lots of lawyers
to find loopholes, but at least on paper
that’s what they paid.
Today those in the top bracket, with
incomes over $388,350, are required to
pay only a 35 percent income tax. Obviously, this so-called marginal tax rate for the
wealthy has dropped steadily over the years.
There has been no corresponding decline
in the marginal tax rate paid by ordinary
workers, most of whom still pay between 15
and 25 percent before deductions.
If the government goes over the “fiscal cliff,” the tax rate on the wealthy will
automatically rise to 39.6 percent. That’s
nothing like the 92 percent tax of the
1950s, but it’s enough to make the rich cry
bloody murder.
Capitalist economic crisis drives the deficit
The liberal bourgeois argument on what
to do about the deficit centers around
the issue of taxes. Liberals want to raise
the top tax rate on the rich, which is now
grotesquely low. But they don’t address

an even bigger problem: the deepening
capitalist economic crisis.
Government revenue, both in the form
of income taxes and FICA, the Social Security/Medicare tax, is adversely affected
when fewer people are working. As of this
July, 17 percent of young people between
16 and 24 years of age couldn’t find jobs,
according to Labor Department figures.
This is an official average; in the oppressed
Black and Latino/a communities, the jobless youth rate is much higher.
That means some 4 million young
people who could have begun paying into
FICA aren’t able to, and the businesses
they would have worked for aren’t paying
in either. This is true for older workers
as well, who are being laid off in droves
even as productivity rises. So as technology more and more replaces workers, the
bosses’ contributions to Social Security
and Medicare become an ever smaller cost
of production and payments to the fund
decline.
Also, as our Social Security benefits are
calculated based on a lifetime of work, the
jobless younger people not only have a
bleak present but an even bleaker future,
whether or not the fund remains solvent.
Other results of no budget agreement
by Dec. 31 would be an across-the-board
cut in all government spending, including
for the Pentagon, and an end to federal
extended unemployment benefits. While
veterans’ benefits are on the table to be
cut, which could affect many with medical
disabilities, both imperialist parties vow to
preserve the Pentagon’s war-fighting capacity, which is by far the most destructive
and costliest in the world.
Robbing Social Security
and bailing out banks
After the 2008 housing crisis morphed
into a banking crisis, the Obama administration sank trillions of dollars into bailing
out the banks. To blunt working-class anger and boost purchasing power, they also
proposed, and Congress voted for, lowering the amount workers paid into Social
Security from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent,
beginning in 2011 and extended in 2012.
The “fiscal cliff” would bring the FICA tax
back to 6.2 percent.
Lowering the deduction for FICA was
presented as a 2 percent “tax cut,” but
in fact it was robbing money from Social
Security. A true tax cut could have been
achieved by cutting the trillions spent on
capitalist wars abroad and repression at
home. But instead this phony “tax cut” just
weakened the Social Security fund, giving
ammunition to those demanding “reforms” that would lower benefits, further
raise the retirement age and even open the
door to privatization.
How big a compromise the Democratic
Party will make on these issues is yet to be
seen. Liberals are arguing that the reelection of Obama shows that the majority
rejected the Republican drive to cut social
programs while shifting even more wealth
to the rich. That’s true.
But the election is over, and the ruling
class is still the ruling class. Behind the
scenes, they command both capitalist
parties. And they aren’t letting up. They’re
just figuring out their next step to rob the
workers’ savings in a “legal” way and make
it “bipartisan.” Many “cliffs” lie ahead, and
they’re all a product of the rotting capitalist system — which is what really should be
shoved over the cliff.

Charlotte, N.C.

Anti-racist youth
counter fascists

On Nov. 10, the "National Socialist
Party," commonly known as neo-Nazi
scum, joined with the Ku Klux Klan to
organize a national gathering in Charlotte, N.C. The neo-Nazis from across the
country received support and solidarity
from the Ku Klux Klan, whose members
were dressed in traditional white robes
and pointed hat garb. North Carolina
residents and activists wouldn’t let fascist, racist and white supremacist voices
trump those who fight for equality.
El Cambio, United 4 the Dream and
the Latin American Coalition organized
a counterdemonstration and successfully "sent in the clowns" and showed
Charlotte that, even though they came
dressed as clowns, the neo-Nazis with
arms raised in the traditional Hitlerian salute and the KKK in traditional
dress, still looked more ridiculous than
the anti-racists.
Mocking the hooded robes, one counterdemonstrator was dressed as a banana and led a chant, "B-A-N-A-N-A-S,
Nazis are bananas!"
Among the immigrant rights groups
there were also many organizers from
the Charlotte People’s Power Assembly, Workers World Party, Occupy

Charlotte, several anarchist groups and
an anti-racist skinhead group called
S.H.A.R.P. — Skin Heads Against Racial Profiling.
Chanting "Racist, fascist, anti-gay,
take your hate and go away!" along with
"LOL not KKK!" the counterdemonstration successfully outnumbered the
neo-Nazis and KKK members approximately at a five to one ratio. Although
some believed these fascists should
be allowed to have freedom of speech
like everyone else, that didn’t stop the
protesters from drowning out the hateful speeches with noisemakers, chants
and whistles.
Some thought it to be ironic to have
three oppressive hate groups in one
area at the same time: the neo-Nazis,
the KKK and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. While the
neo-Nazis and KKK spoke of preserving
"white civil rights" and claimed that the
U.S. is a "white nation" and should only
have white leaders, this demonstration
reminded us that white supremacy
is still alive and well, and that only a
fighting movement can fundamentally
change the racist, classist system.
— Story and photo by Cameron Aviles

Capitalism’s environmental death
Continued from page 6
ers must be freed from the profit interest
and mandated to come up with better
sources of renewable energy and ways to
restore the environment that will begin
to reverse the course of devastation.
Millions of young people who are
condemned to low-wage jobs, unemployment or prison by this system,
which offers them no future, should
be educated and trained to take on the
scientific and other challenges of the future. What is needed is science for the
people — a scientific renaissance freed
from the shackles of capital and turned

toward serving human need.
This is the only way that humanity
can surmount the present crisis. And it
means getting rid of capitalism.
The first part of this article was
printed in the Nov. 15 issue of Workers
World. To read this article in full, search
for “Hurricane Sandy, climate change
and capitalist crisis” at ­workers.org.
Goldstein is author of “Low-Wage
Capitalism” and “Capitalism at a Dead
End.” More information is available
at www.lowwagecapitalism.com. The
author can be reached at fgoldstein@
workers.org.

The Lavender and Red series of articles by Leslie Feinberg,
author of Stone Butch Blues, is now available online.
The series includes:

Rainbow Solidarity
In Defense of CUBA
This groundbreaking book documents revolutionary
Cuba’s inspiring trajectory of progress towards
liberation of­sexualities, genders and sexes. Book
available at Amazon.com

workers.org/lavender-red

workers.org

Nov. 22, 2012

Page 11

Media misrepresent Puerto Rico vote
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
While U.S. citizens cast their votes for
president Nov. 6, Puerto Rico’s residents
were also voting for the next governor of
the island. They also voted in a nonbinding referendum, a plebiscite, supposedly
to define the island’s status.
Currently Puerto Rico is a “commonwealth” or an Estado Libre Asociado (ELA)
or Free Associated State. This is a pure
contradiction in terms, as Puerto Rico is
not a state, it is not free, and it is does not
have sovereignty to establish a real association. A country whose economy, foreign
relations and trade, legislature and police
force are in the hands of the U.S. government cannot freely decide anything.
Puerto Rico has been a colony of the USA
since the Yankee invasion of 1898. Any
change in Puerto Rico’s constitution has to
be “approved” by the U.S. Congress. Thus
this so-called plebiscite is a legal farce.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to look
closely both at the vote and how the international corporate media reported the
results. Even in social networks like Facebook and Twitter, there was constant reference to “Puerto Ricans choosing statehood.” This is far from the truth. Let us
look at the questions and numbers.
Slightly over 2 million voters were registered. Some 77.4 percent of them voted, a
high turnout compared to that in the U.S.
The plebiscite was divided into two
parts. The official ballot was written in
Spanish and English, which are the island’s
official languages, although Puerto Rico’s
primary language is Spanish. The first
question was: “Do you agree that Puerto
Rico should continue to have its present
form of territorial status? Yes or No.”

This was followed by the second question: “Regardless of your selection in the
first question, please mark which of the
following non-territorial options would
you prefer. The options [are] Statehood,
Independence or Sovereign Free Associated State.”
Reject colonial status
For the first time in the history of Puerto Rico, the majority of voters rejected
the current colonial status. The “No” received 52.4 percent, the “Yes” got 44.7,
and the rest of the ballots were blank. The
last option was encouraged by a sector of
the colonial Partido Popular Democrático
(PPD) or Democratic Popular Party.
The response to the second question,
which has been misrepresented by much
of the international media, does not show
that statehood was the choice of the majority. If you add votes for Independence,
Sovereign ELA and the 473,000 blank
ballots, plus some contested ballots, the
total is 55 percent of voters who did not
choose statehood!
These numbers in themselves are incapable of reflecting the complex economic
and demographic reality of Puerto Rico.
Elections, particularly a plebiscite on
status in a colony, are not a real exercise
in democracy. There is no authentic freedom to organize for the option that will
make the people of Puerto Rico truly free:
independence. The repression of Puerto
Rican independence activists and fighters
is still very much alive — through assassinations, harassment, long prison terms
with no justification, FBI record keeping,
etc. The struggle for independence has always been criminalized.
Puerto Rico is a country whose econo-

my has been destroyed, where the median income is less than that in the poorest
state of the USA, and whose work force
has been forced to migrate to the “mainland” in order to survive.
The island’s population has decreased
over the last few years. There are 3.7 million people living on the island, but 4.2
million Puerto Ricans in the USA!
The Puerto Ricans who reside outside
the island are not permitted to vote in
Puerto Rico’s elections.
In an article written by Puerto Rican
independence hero Rafael Cancel Miranda the day before the elections, entitled
“Democratic Elections?” he raises another important issue regarding the demographics of the island and its impact on
the elections:
“And how many of these 3.7 million
residents in Puerto Rico are Puerto Rican? In Puerto Rico there are a large number of people of the USA eligible to vote,
so many, that the electoral ads are published in Spanish and English. And there
are other thousands of foreigners who reside in Puerto Rico, but who have sworn
allegiance to the United States flag, not to

the Puerto Rican. How do you think the
majority of them will vote? We must not
forget that in Hawaii the foreigners made
up the majority in a so-called plebiscite
that brought statehood to that former nation.” (pr.indymedia.org)
Fortuño rejected as governor
In the gubernatorial election, Luis Fortuño was the pro-statehood, pro-business
incumbent governor responsible for the
latest neoliberal policies on the island.
These include the attempt to privatize
national institutions like the University
of Puerto Rico, the layoff of thousands
of state workers, the threat of imposing a
gas pipeline, and many other anti-people
laws and maneuvers.
Fortuño was voted out, getting only
47.1 percent of the vote.
The new governor, Alejandro García
Padilla, representing the PPD, won with
47.8 percent, a very narrow margin. The
rest of the votes were divided among four
parties, including the older Puerto Rican
Independence Party (PIP). The other
three parties were new, participating for
the first time in elections.

Dominican Republic protest

Police kill student

Demonstration against sales tax,
privatization of education

General strikes sweep Europe
Workers unite to fight austerity
Continued from page 1
sector. General strikes are also expected
in Cyprus and Malta.
In France, five trade union confederations have called for mass participation
in demonstrations called for 95 regions of
the country.
In Belgium, in addition to countrywide
symbolic actions, work stoppages are
planned in certain areas. According to the
Belgian Workers’ Party newspaper, the
FGTB trade union confederation will call
a general strike in Wallonia, the predominantly French-speaking southern region
of Belgium.
National actions have also been announced in the Netherlands, Switzerland,
Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania and
Croatia, and the German Trade Union
Confederation joined the Europewide

call, so there will also be demonstrations
in Germany.
European workers have good reason to
be angry. Within the European Union, 24
million workers are unemployed as the
EU economies slog through a disastrous
double dip recession initially brought on
by the financial crisis of 2008, and exacerbated by the austerity programs forced
on workers by the “Troika”: the European
Commission (EC), which is the EU’s executive arm; the International Monetary
Fund; and the European Central Bank.
Still, the EU’s subservient capitalist governments continue to pass crushing austerity measures.
European workers are making it clear
that this capitalist crisis is not of their
making, and that they will resist the big
banks’ offensive aimed at solving the crisis on the backs of the workers.

War Without Victory

Sara Flounders
“By revealing the underbelly of the
empire, Flounders sheds insight on
how to stand up to the imperialist
war machine and, in so doing, save
ourselves and humanity.”

Nov. 11 protest in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The sign reads “Social inequality is
more violent than any protest.”

Special to Workers World
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Police shot and killed a student at the
Autonomous University here during a
campus protest against a higher sales
tax and the proposed privatization of the
school.
Witnesses said that William Florian
Ramírez, 21, was only watching the Nov.
8 demonstration when he was shot in the
back. The university is the country’s largest, with 180,000 students.
The administration of President Daniel Medina is under fire for corruption
carried out by his ruling Dominican Liberation Party. Critics say the budget deficit this year of $4.6 billion stems largely
from the widespread theft of public funds.
Giving the deficit as an excuse, the government has increased the nation’s sales
tax from 16 to 18 percent, putting the burden directly on the already poverty-stricken working class.
The tax applies to almost all commodities, including food and fuel.
The protest at the campus against the
higher tax was just one of many that took
place all over the country.
Medina was elected this August, but

belongs to the same party as the previous
administration. Accusers say that much
of the money stolen by the governing party was used for his election.
The police killing of civilians is common here. About 400 persons per year
are murdered by the police, who are rarely if ever arrested and tried. However,
public outrage over this shooting was so
great, especially coming at a time when
the government was on the defensive over
corruption charges, that Medina quickly
had the cop fired and arrested. Several
other police officials who had been at the
scene are “under investigation.” Even the
conservative head of the Senate called for
“swift justice” against the cop who killed
the student.
The cop’s arrest is highly unusual and
reflects fear in ruling circles that the
growing desperation of the masses over
the new president’s economic measures
will lead to greater struggles.
For most of the decades since U.S.
Marines first invaded the Dominican Republic in 1916, corrupt right-wing governments have ruled here with Washington’s
blessing. A brief period of revolutionary
nationalism in the mid-1960s was ended
by a second U.S. invasion in 1965.